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April 28, 2008

Standard Operating Procedure

Spring is in the air but we know you well, discerning reader. You're not into vacuous rejoicing. We applaud your instinct to hold the scents and scattering blossoms of spring as oh! so flippant. You yearn for the falling leaves of autumn and pine for the voluptuous bouts of sorrow and depression that define true thinkers. Well, there's light at the end of your springtime tunnel! Standard Operating Procedure, a new film by Errol Morris on the horror of Abu Ghraib, has arrived to plunge you into the bluest of autumnal blues at a theater near you:

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken
by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed
America's image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the
notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic
abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant
behavior of a few "bad apples"? We set out to examine the context of
these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the
frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and
who were in the photographs. Who are these people? What were they
thinking? Over two years of investigation, we amassed a million and a
half words of interview transcript, thousands of pages of unredacted
reports, and hundreds of photographs. The story of Abu Ghraib is still
shrouded in moral ambiguity, but it is clear what happened there. The
Abu Ghraib photographs serve as both an expose and a coverup. An
expose, because the photographs offer us a glimpse of the horror of Abu
Ghraib; and a coverup because they convinced journalists and readers
they had seen everything, that there was no need to look further. In
recent news reports, we have learned about the destruction of the Abu
Zubaydah interrogation tapes. A coverup. It has been front page news.
But the coverup at Abu Ghraib involved thousands of prisoners and
hundreds of soldiers. We are still learning about the extent of it.
Many journalists have asked about "the smoking gun" of Abu Ghraib. It
is the wrong question. As Philip Gourevitch has commented, Abu Ghraib
is the smoking gun. The underlying question that we still have not
resolved, four years after the scandal: how could American values
become so compromised that Abu Ghraib—and the subsequent coverup—could
happen?

The documentary film is accompanied by a companion book of the same name by Philip Gourevitch:

"When you see a picture, you don't see outside the frame," one of the American soldiers convicted for dereliction of duty at Abu Ghraib Prison told filmmaker Errol Morris.
Maybe people think they know all there is to know, or all they want to
know, about the hundreds of snapshots taken in that distilled hell
created by American occupation forces in Iraq in 2003. But the truly
savage beatings that did take place at Abu Ghraib—at least one of which
ended an Iraqi's life—weren't caught on camera. And if a young woman
soldier who hoped someday to be a forensic photographer had not taken
detailed shots of the corpse left behind by interrogators in one of the
prison's fetid showers, we probably would not have known about that
case, either ...

"No soldiers above the rank of sergeant ever served jail time,"
Gourevitch writes at the end of his book. "Nobody was ever charged with
torture, or war crimes, or any violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Nobody ever faced charges for keeping prisoners naked, or shackled.
Nobody ever faced charges for holding prisoners as hostages. Nobody
ever faced charges for incarcerating children who were accused of no
crime and posed no security threat. Nobody ever faced charges for
holding thousands of prisoners in a combat zone in constant danger of
their lives … Nobody ever faced charges for shooting and killing
prisoners who were confined behind concertina wire." And nobody was ever held to
account for beating that man to death in the shower, although the woman
who shot the pictures initially faced charges for having taken them.
All that is outside the frame, precedent for a dangerous future where
no photographs will be allowed at all. Which is why this film has to be
seen, and this book has to be read. (More here.)

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New Book by Namit Arora

“The Lottery of Birth reveals Namit Arora to be one of our finest critics. In a raucous public sphere marked by blame and recrimination, these essays announce a bracing sensibility, as compassionate as it is curious, intelligent and nuanced.” —Pankaj Mishra